Roberto Crippa - Triptych

The work draws on a pop aesthetic in its use of sign elements and their serial repetition. Pop Art was born in the United States in the second half of the 20th century as an interest/critique by artists of the contemporary "consumer society." All expressions of Pop Art presuppose a sort of double bond with the world of consumerism and the mass media. On the one hand, the artwork is reduced to a mere consumer product, thanks to the use of advertising language in the works and their serial reproduction through mechanical processes. On the other, it is the advertising images and consumer goods themselves that become works of art, as the most genuine and truthful expression of the new society. In this triptych, Roberto Crippa performs a meditation on the emblem of the 50th Air Force Wing, consisting of a winged gladius. The subject was inspired by the artist's passion for aviation. Roberto Crippa, in fact, owned a plane and died during an aerobatic flight.

Although Roberto Crippa is one of the most important exponents of the Spatialist movement, in this triptych he seems to draw on the pop meditations of the Piazza del Popolo School. The iconic symbol dominates the center of the painting, reproduced mechanically and serially, differentiated by different color palettes (as in Schifano's "Esso" or "Coca-Cola" logos or Angeli's "Half-dollar" logos). However, the artist's aesthetic is highly expressionist; the elements of the emblem are almost broken down and rendered through a gestural graphic sign, extremely synthetic and vital. Everything, therefore, even what has now been rendered banal by mechanical or technological reproduction, is revitalized by the artist's recontextualization and his pictorial gestures, inspired by American Abstract Expressionism. The Spatialist theme, however, is not lacking, even in this predominantly pop work by Crippa. It returns with the spiral traced by the small plane: for Roberto Crippa, the spiral is an abstract and geometric figure which, tending towards three-dimensionality, can transcend the two-dimensionality of the work and radiate energy into the very space of the viewer. In the graphics in question, the spiral is created by the artist with a thin yet precise line, tracing clear orbits that create their own concrete existence on the surface of the work.

Gaetano Crippa, known as Roberto, was born in Monza in 1921 and died in Bresso in 1972. Besides being a painter and engraver, he was also known as an aviator. He began his career as a figurative artist and then moved on to a Cubism very close to Picasso. He finally found his own artistic language after embracing the Spatialist Manifesto, creating the "Spirals" cycle. Spirals are constructions that, through their circular movements, tend towards three-dimensionality and, therefore, transcend the dimension of the work, remaining in line with the principles of Spatialism.

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